


How Long Can a Secret Keep?

by RougueShadowWolf



Series: 15 Minutes [209]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Claudia Stilinski Has Secrets, Crazy Claudia Stilinski, Evil Claudia Stilinski, F/M, Manipulative Relationship, Murder, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Sick Claudia Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 00:44:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20666525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RougueShadowWolf/pseuds/RougueShadowWolf
Summary: Claudia didn’t care what she had to do to have a baby. She didn’t care about the people she hurt to have the baby that would save her marriage. She didn’t care about the young mother she killed, she didn’t think about the devastation and worry the young father fighting overseas would suffer.





	How Long Can a Secret Keep?

**Author's Note:**

> Tread carefully, there are fouls things hiding in the dark. Not all monsters are ancient, and not all wear sharp fangs and deadly claws, some are but human with ill-intent. And so, if your hold your life dear, then take care, be aware for not all find value in the life of others. 
> 
> Alrighty then, time to apologize for my failure to upload this round of 15Minutes sooner, well, I lived under the firm belief that I had done it but it seemed my brain in its insomniac state of corruption and allergy meds haze was wrong about me uploading this story. It wasn’t until my darling ItAlmostWorked! went to read a few of these stories written at the start of August, that my failure to do as promised came to light. 
> 
> To those familiar enough with the basis of this series move on to A SLIGHT CHANGE since you’ll find nothing new or of value here, but those unfamiliar with this series let me explain a few things. The most important thing to know is that these stories are written as the series name would suggest in 15Minutes, one the time is up I am required by the rules of this game to stop, this is leaves the storytelling side clumsy and ripe with horrific grammar and typos; and if you are unable to handle typos, bad grammar and clumsy storytelling that might end without a proper ending, do leave now and save yourself any unnecessary agony. Each story is a gift of sorts, a payment to a group of friends of mine, and so they will feed me and idea and I shall write it, that is all on this matter. Now follow me down to A SLIGHT CHANGE. 
> 
> A SLIGHT CHANGE is just that, a slight change in the normal spin of things. There is a theme to handle here, one of Child Stiles, but worry not ReadingIsLikeWellDry still has the power to make requests such as asking for a story that is a little bit dark and grim, and one where Stiles’ biological father is Jordan Parrish and not the Sheriff, but the Sheriff doesn’t know this but Claudia of course does. ReadingIsLikeWellDry also wanted different POV and timelines too, so that was a challenge in itself to get done.

There’s a part of her that knows that what she’s done wasn’t right.

Claudia knows the true wrongness of her actions. How could she not know how truly horrific her actions were?

She wasn’t ignorant to the wickedness of what she’s done, and regardless of how much she wanted it, it honestly didn’t matter what the reason behind her actions were. Her desperate actions would never be seen as anything but evil, what she’d done would be seen as the actions of a truly wicked and depraved woman.

The moment Claudia had started down the road which ended with her holding the child she was unable to have on her own, she’d known she was damning her soul and forever losing any right to condemn anyone else for their wrong doings.

There was not a soul on earth or in heaven would forgive or understand her actions.

There would be no sympathy for her if the truth ever came out, and she knew this, and yet she didn’t deep down care about what anyone would think of her.

Cradling the infant who wasn’t even half-an-hour old, Claudia watches keenly as the old beat-up rust-bucket of a Ford began to slowly vanish into the dark water of the lake.

The screams of the hitchhiker she’d picked-up earlier that week rang loudly in the otherwise silent night. The terrified screams increased in volume as the cold water leaked into trunk of the long-ago abandoned car. The desperate, frightened screams of the young woman who had trusted Claudia not only with her own life but also that of her unborn child, didn’t bother Claudia as much as she knows they should, but these muffled screams were upsetting the baby Claudia had helped deliver and which she would raise and love as her own.

If the soon to be dead girl hadn’t been pregnant then Claudia would never have done her any harm, none at all, after all Claudia wasn’t a monster, but the girl had been pregnant and had told her she was running close to her due date.

Claudia had seen her chance to better her life, to save her face and marriage in the round belly of this young girl she’d picked-up from the side of a lonely road.

From the moment the girl, April that was her name, climbed into Claudia’s Jeep, the fate of April and the baby in her round belly had been sealed.

The moment the baby was out of its birthmother, the life of April Reynolds became worthless to Claudia. April became but a problem to be solved the moment Claudia had the baby in her arms, the girl was reduced into nothing but a thing Claudia had to deal with to secure her own life with the baby that she would raise as her own.

Certainly, Claudia had made attempts to convince April to handing the baby over to her, she’d attempted to talk some sense to the stupid girl during the weeks Claudia kept her locked and chained-up in the small lake house that her uncle had left Claudia in his will. Claudia had even gone as far as to try and offer the girl money, the lake house even, but the stubborn girl had continued to refuse every single offer Claudia made.

All that the stupid girl cared about was having a future with the baby and the father of the child, a father that might get killed somewhere fighting another useless conflict created by their very own government, and Claudia couldn’t deny she wished that this Jordan or Jarod got himself blown-up by some roadside bomb or got a bullet in the head for his so-called service.

With how April continued to refuse everything Claudia offered her, clinging to a fantasy of reuniting with some stupid young man fooled into serving a country that wouldn’t give a shit about him if he died tomorrow, Claudia was left without any other option than send April to her watery grave as soon as the baby had been delivered.

Claudia wasn’t a someone who went around killing people, she took no pleasure or joy in what she had to do. Claudia didn’t want to take a life, but with how April continued to refuse to let her keep the baby, she was left with very little options.

What Claudia did was to simply ensure that she could keep her husband.

Claudia doesn’t really think that what she’s done makes her a monster, since she took no pleasure in any of this.

Sure, wishing for the death of the man who’d fathered the baby in her arms wasn’t nice, but his death would ensure the guy wouldn’t get a stupid idea such as trying to find the child he’d fathered, not that she imagined this Jared or Jordan Parrish to do such a thing; the guy was probably having a fling with someone right now, fucking some stupid woman right now as the mother of his son was drowning in the trunk of a beat-up old Ford.

The baby deserved a better father than this Parrish character, and Claudia’s husband would be that better father, this she knew.

Gazing down at the wrinkly little face of the baby that the screaming woman in the trunk had been planning to name after its father, but Claudia had no intention of naming her son Jordan Parrish Jr or Jared Parrish Jr, such a boring name as Jordan had no place with something so small and precious as her little boy.

Claudia would name her child after her father just like her husband would want it, and this child would carry on the good name of Stilinski instead of Parrish which was as dull of a name as Jordan or Jared.

Parrish was young, and so if he made it ever back to the Untied States, well, Parrish could easily find a new woman to help him carry on his dull name.

Claudia waits until she’s no longer able to hear the screams of the silly girl, she waits for as long as it takes for her to be sure that April didn’t escape from the trunk of the car. She had to make sure that April wouldn’t be able to destroy all the hard-work Claudia had done to save her marriage, and only when she was certain April Reynolds wouldn’t rise from the water grave Claudia had arranged for her, did she make her way into the Lake House all the while smiling down at her son and telling him all about the man who would love him oh so much. 

**~*~**

Glancing down at the scan, the last one April had sent him with a letter telling him she was going to take-up Jordan’s aunts offer of a place to stay, she couldn’t handle the hostility of her parents or the way the continued to pressure her to give the baby away for adoption; the news had been a happy one to him, since he didn’t want his son to be born into a family where he wouldn’t be loved.

This first proper image of his son become extremely valuable to him, enough so that he’d dislocated the arm of an idiot who thought he could just take it from him, and use it to mock him for carrying around the grainy image of a baby instead of some hot chick.

The picture of his son meant everything to Jordan, it reminded him that he had something to look forward too. This scan told him to stay strong, stay alive, be as good of a man as possible in a country torn to pieces by war, he’d seen more than one man lose their moral compass in these stressful condition and Jordan was determined to avoid that fate; Jordan had to remain as good of a man as possible for his son, he didn’t want his kid to look at him with shame in their eyes.

The image of his son was also the only proof he had that he was a dad, it was something that kept him pushing to stay alive and be strong so that he could one day find April and his son.

Carefully he traces his gloved fingers over the grainy little shape that was his baby boy, and he can’t help but think that Nick from Kansas was right that his soon looked adorable, even while wearing a disgruntled expression.

Tracing the grainy image of his child, Jordan promised once more that as soon as he was free from serving his country and no longer playing an easily expendable pawn in a war that had not made the world a safer place, once he was back home he’d try and find his kid and no matter what April or her family would say, Jordan would be a part of the life he’d helped create.

Jordan knows that his kid should’ve been born by now, Jordan knows this since the due-date had been at the start of April and they were well into July now, and even if he hadn’t known the due-date he’d still have known this because he’d kept track of the months and days, he’d spent hours reading about pregnancies, babies as well as parenting to keep feeling like he wasn’t as uninvolved as he was made to feel.

Breathing in a shaky breath Jordan kisses the picture of his kid before placing it in the pocket closes to his heart, patting it twice before glaring up at the sky where behind a cloud of thick smoke a sun was shining cruelly. The stifling heat made worse by the uniform he was wearing and the gear he was carrying.

`Ready Parrish? ´ he hears Nick from Kansas as from where he was crouched behind the ruins of wall, the guy grinning like the idiot adrenalin junky he was, and Jordan gives him a short nod.

`What do you say, let’s be heroes for a day. ´ Nick says then, and Jordan really wants to beat some sense into the guy who had sort of lost the plot after he learned his wife was planning to divorce him. 

`I’d rather just be alive for another day. ´ Jordan responds before getting up onto one knee, readying himself for another shitstorm of a day, hoping all the while this wasn’t the day that he got himself killed, because he was not going to die before he had even a chance to hold his son once.

Breathing in another breath, focusing on the commands given by his superior, Jordan Parrish promised not for the first-time that he was going to get his ass back home, and swore to himself and God that he was going to find his kid and April, and he would devote the rest of his life making sure his kid was healthy and safe, and above all else happy.

**~*~*~**

With a sense of hopelessness, one which he’d never experienced before, John started to head back to where he’d left his and Claudia’s son. The latest scan had made it clear that Claudia was deteriorating faster than expected. Trying to keep his emotions in check, trying his best to not crumble under the horrific weight of reality he makes his way back to where he’d left this kid.

John had done his best to keep his only child in the dark when it came to how seriously ill Claudia was, he was trying to protect his son from the reality of Claudia’s illness in hopes of Stiles’ not losing more of his innocence; no child should have to face the death of their parent before they had grown-up fully into adulthood, no kid should have watch their parent die before they had a family of their own to stay strong for, but that wasn’t in the cards for his son.

Turning the corner John stills immediately, his son was gone.

The sight of a row of uncomfortable chairs standing empty in the dreary white hallway, causes his heart to nearly stops because John knew how dangerous the world could be for a little kid, a little boy who was the son of a Sheriff that had put a lot of bad people in prison long before moving to Beacon Hills, and some of these people could hold a grudge.

John does his best to remain calm and rational, which is much harder to do than it had been to accept that there was something wrong with his wife. Maybe his kid just needed to use the toilet or perhaps Stiles had caught sight of a familiar and friendly nurse, both theories dying down quickly as he checked the men’s restroom and checked at the nurse’s station.

The third option that frankly was almost as bad as the idea of some stranger abducting his son, the third option was one where Stiles had gone against his direct instructions and gone to visit Claudia alone.

John honestly doesn’t know whether or not he wants to find his son with Claudia, it shouldn’t frighten him as much it does to think Stiles all alone with his wife, but since Claudia started to take a turn for the worse it honestly wasn’t safe for Stiles to be around Claudia unsupervised, it simply wasn’t safe for their son to be around her these days.

Finding Stiles’ backpack on the floor right outside the room Claudia had been signed too, the sight is not a comforting one and neither is finding the room hauntingly empty of his wife and son. The empty room sends a new sense of fear to explode within him as he stared a new and far more desperate search.

The sight of the package of sweets he’d bought his kid to distract Stiles long enough so John could talk in peace with Claudia’s doctor, the package discarded right outside a simple door that had an emergency exit sign glowing above it. John knows where this door will take him, he’d already twice found himself seeking shelter there when his emotions threatened to take the better of him, he’d stood up on the roof of the hospitals screaming his sorrow and pain into the air before returning to take care of his wife and son

Breathing in a shaky breath John opens the familiar door, his heart racing painfully within his chest as he steps into the poorly lit area of stairs, he hears a door open and close somewhere above him and John just knows that’s his kid, he just knows through which door his son had just walked through, his panicked heart aches in his chest as he starts to climb the stairs.

Uselessly he yells for his son like the desperate and frightened man he is. 

John may have fallen out of love with Claudia before their son was born, he may have even believed she’d lied to him about being pregnant at the time, but that all changed when he saw his son for the first-time and it terrified him that Claudia might do something to take the one good thing they’d made from him in a fit of madness.

Ascending the stairs as fast as he possibly could without stumbling and breaking his neck, John finds one of Stiles’ little and colourful gloves on the stairs leading up to the door that would take him out onto the roof of the hospital. John clings to that glove like a bloody lifeline as he pushes onwards.

John’s heart stutters as he opens the door, fearing all the while what he might find behind it. There’s an unforgiving fear in him that he’ll walk in on his wife possibly pushing their son off of the roof, and act he honestly can’t put past Claudia these days; not after he walked in on his wife trying to suffocate their son with her own pillow, John would be forever grateful for whatever it was that had made him go home in the middle of the shift to check on his son, since if he hadn’t then his baby boy would’ve been stone-cold dead when he finally came home from work.

`Mieczyslaw! ´ John shouts as soon as steps onto the roof, the cold air of the late autumn evening causing him to shiver, but the chill of autumn isn’t nearly enough to explain the way his whole body goes cold.

It’s the sight of their son moving towards Claudia who was standing dangerously close to the edge of the roof, the sight of his son walking straight into danger sends a bone chilling fear through his whole body.

For a moment John is frozen with fear, watching with silent terror as his wife calls for their son to come to her, Claudia’s voice is sickly sweet and there’s a tilt there in her softly spoken encouragements that just isn’t right.

`Mischeif, come to mommy. ´ John hears Claudia almost sing to their son, and although his son appears to sense that something isn’t right, every step hesitant and uneasy, his son obeys Claudia none the less.

John knows it’s the love of a child for its mother that pushes his son to continue towards Claudia.

The sharp, crazed smile that draws slowly upon Claudia’s face and the way her eyes gleam with malice is enough to set John running towards their son, it’s also enough to cause their son to pause and whisper out a rather frightened, `Mommy? ´ This moment of hesitation brings forth something ugly in Claudia, her whole face appears altered with something dark and dangerous, and she roars before reaching out towards their son.

`Claudia, NO! ´ John yells while reaching out to pull his son away from Claudia’s ill intending reach, the grip he has of the small hood of the blue jacket is one so fixed that even if his wife would attempt to pull their son to her John’s death grip would not yield. 

Pulling his son to him, and then lifting the tiny body he’d spent many nights curled protectively around after he caught his wife trying to kill him, and even now after Claudia no longer lived with them John was still paranoid enough to have his son sleeping with him in his bed; it didn’t matter that John had changed all the locks of the house, he was still afraid that Claudia would somehow sneak into the house and finish what she’d started.

`Give him to me. ´ Claudia snarls from where she is pacing, but John ignores her instead focuses on making sure that his son was unharmed.

Once certain that their son was fine, aside from little shaken and crying, John sets his kid back down and tells his little boy to go back downstairs and to wait for him there, planting a small kiss on the pale forehead before gently pushing the protesting child in the direction of the doors.

`Don’t you dare! ´ Claudia shrieks, then realizing such a move wouldn’t grant her what she wanted, she changed her tactic and went back to being sweet and gentle as she called out to their son, asking their son to just come to her and give her a hug so that she would feel better.

`Stiles, son, go back downstairs. We’ll be down in a second. ´ John tells his son sharply when he hears Stiles started to move towards him and Claudia, tonight is not a goodnight for his son to be around Claudia.

`But – but, daddy….´ Stiles starts, voice shaky and unsure, tearful even, but John isn’t having any of it. He has to protect Stiles from himself at the moment, and so he turns sharply to face his son, and orders his son to do as he was told with a voice that worked to startle men into following his commands.

`Downstairs. Now. ´ John manages somehow to keep the fear in him from seeping into his voice.

`I’ll take care of her, son. You just go back downstairs and wait for us, alright. ´ John continues, feeling compelled to be less harsh after seeing how badly his son had been startled by the loudness of his voice, there’s a small whimper of a protest that comes from his son, but eventually he hears his son move and do as he is told.

Hearing the door close once more, makes it a little bit easier for John to breathe again.

Life hadn’t always been easy for him and Claudia, the history they shared wasn’t great or a healthy one. John had married his high school sweetheart because she’d told him she was pregnant, but it turned out that was a lie a month in to being Mr. and Mrs. Stilinski. Claudia used the I’m pregnant card as a chain anytime John so much as began to think about leaving her, and eventually he’d had enough and left even after she told him she was pregnant, he moved to Beacon Hills honestly believing Claudia was only pretending to be pregnant again. Not even the pictures she sent him of their son had convinced him, only when she appeared at the Sheriff’s Station with his son could he bring himself to believe her.

Since the day John held his son for the first-time in his arms John Stilinski had sworn his life and loyalty to his son, he’d promised to never leave his child and to protect him even from Claudia.

`Claudia. ´ John calls out gently to his wife, a woman he’d fallen out of love with before the birth of their son, and who he might not love as much as someone deserved to be loved.

His nerves almost getting the better of him, as he moves closer to her, closer to the edge of the roof off of which she could’ve so easily dropped their child from. 

`What are you doing up there? ´ he asks voice far steadier than the flow of thoughts inside his head.

`I couldn’t stand to be in that room anymore, ´ Claudia reply, voice paranoid and angry, `Not with him looking at me like that. ´

It breaks his heart to hear her say such things, as does hearing Claudia say she thinks Stiles wants to hurt her, which John knows that their son would never desire to do. Stiles loved his mother and everyone could see that, everyone but Claudia.

Stiles loved his mother, enough to try and hide the bruises she gave him, enough to lie for her, their son would never want to hurt her and John knows this.

`He wants to kill me. ´ Claudia says in such a way that anyone who didn’t know Stiles may have believed her, `He knows. He knows. And that’s why, that’s why he’s trying to kill me. ´

`Claudia, Mieczyslaw, would never hurt you. Claudia, remember that it’s just your illness making you think like this. ´ John tells his wife softly, begging her in all honesty to think clearly, just long enough until he could get her back downstairs and into her room.

`He knows! He knows! I have to kill him John, I have to - he’ll ruin everything. ´ Claudia tells him and he can tell that she’s determined to make sure their son doesn’t see another day, and it terrifies him because Stiles would walk into a burning building for her and surely Claudia knew this.

`It’s okay, ´ John says, voice shaky and uneasy as he closes the distance between him and Claudia, and as he wraps his arms around her trembling form, he whispers into her hair a fragile promise, `I promise Claudia, I promise he’ll not hurt you. ´ This was an easy promise to make, easier than promising to love her forever was.

**Author's Note:**

> Let’s just face it, Claudia is batshit crazy, can we agree on this? Good. 
> 
> Now I’d like to think that eventually Parrish is drawn to Beacon Hills and gets a job at the station, and there he comes across the Sheriff’s son who looks strangely familiar to him and who just makes him want to spend as much time as possible with the kid, like he’s more than happy to look after the boy around the station and keep him distracted and out of trouble. He’s even willing to babysit the kid on his days off. 
> 
> What if Parrish starts dating Lydia, this amazing grown-ass woman with a gift to communicate with the dead, and when Parrish one day tells Lydia about the loss he’d suffered, in a small way of explaining why most of his pay-checks are used on more important things than taking her out on fancy dates. What if Lydia takes pity on him and decides to reach out to the spirit realm to ask one of Parrish’s ancestors or something where his child and ex-might be and if they are fine, but instead this young woman of now blood relation crashes the party and tells her what happened? April doesn’t know the name of the person who took her son, but she knows that the woman is dead and that her son is alive and even where to find him, but the connection Lydia had with her breaks just as April butchers the name Mieczyslaw. 
> 
> When Lydia tells Parrish what she’s learned he is of course horrified, who wouldn’t be. Parrish only knows Stiles as… well, Stiles, so he doesn’t immediately realize his son has been right there under his nose since he came to Beacon Hills. But after a few twists and turns, such as finding out that April’s body and then tracing the ownership of the cabin all the way down to Claudia and her uncle. Then as Parrish goes to question the Sheriff, maybe Stiles is trying to listen in on the angry conversation and the Sheriff yells at Stiles to go upstairs, but he doesn’t say Stiles but rather Mieczyslaw.
> 
> Damn, got to go.


End file.
